Tag Archives: felicia day

A little while ago, I wrote a quick piece about the ‘Guest Stars of the Month’.

I thought I’d follow that up with some random thoughts on some particularly good guest stars I’ve seen lately.

Carrie Preston
Most will know Carrie Preston from her recurring role in ‘True Blood’, but she has been appearing in a few shows over the past year or so, most notably ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘Person of Interest’. Both of these appearances have shown she is a far greater actress than ‘True Blood’ indicated (which was already good).

Curtis Armstrong
Once, mainly known for being ‘Bert Viola’ in ‘Moonlighting’, he has been in loads of things over the years. Now appearing as ‘Metatron’ in Supernatural.

Magda Apanowicz
After appearing as a series regular in ‘Caprica’, not much has been seen of her (we’ll ignore that short run on ‘Hellcats’), but a new recurring role in ‘Continuum’ is a welcome return to mainstream tv. Has also appeared in some Team Unicorn projects in the past couple of years too, so more interesting things could appear.

Denis O’Hare
‘Russell Edgington’ of ‘True Blood’, but also has recurring appearances in ‘The Good Wife’. A great actor.

Tina Majorino
Hopefully, she will appear in the ‘Veronica Mars’ film, but if she doesn’t, then her recent role on Greys Anatomy, where she has really been making her mark, should keep her on the way up.

Amy Acker
Always great, she has continued to keep the quality up throughout this season on ‘Person of Interest’.

Timothy Busfield
Been around for ever, but it’s always good to see him appear in stuff. Most recently in ‘Revolution’.

Patrick Flueger
I’ve not seen much of him since ‘The 4400’, so good to see him back again.

We all know geeks. Most people reading this probably fall into one or another category of actually being a geek. But you may have noticed of late that there seem to be more of them around, and that they’re appearing more often in more places. Rock stars (Devonté Hynesof Lightspeed Champion), film stars (Vin Diesel plays D&D, Mr. T, Felicia Day, and Mila Kunis all play World of Warcraft)…

Famous Geeks

But why are the geeks on the rise? Well there are several factors that are contributing to their rise. First up, and probably most importantly is the fact that gadgets are cool. iPhones are the phone to have (provided you’re an iSheep who doesn’t know any better), and everyone spends their time downloading pointless apps to do pointless things. iPads, laptops, Facebook, YouTube, smart phones, MMORPG’s, digital cameras, emails – everyone’s using them to some degree even if it’s just for work. Facebook alone has more than 500 million users, which is more people than most Eastern European countries can claim as citizens, and so many of those users are spending so much time checking their friends status updates that companies have now incorporated restrictions on its use into their employee contracts.

Of course, the more prevalent these things become, the more likely you are to lure the potential geeks out of the proverbial woodwork. People that ten years ago would never have even considered spending two hours sat on a computer after work are regularly doing just that. People that sneered (and often still do sneer) at Dungeons and Dragons and those that play will happily spend hours slaying Vrykul warriors in the heart of Icecrown looking for epic loot on World of Warcraft. So the prevalence of these things is enabling the creation of more geeks.

And obviously more people ‘geeking out’ means more people buying into these geeky things… it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. But what about that beast lurking at the end of the network cable? I mean of course the Internet. It makes it so much easier to be a geek. Say for instance you recognise an actor in some popular musical-based series set in a high school. You want to know what film you last saw them in, so you tap their name into Google. You discover it was some awful film about Goats or something. Then you look up Goats. Then ninjas, then swords… and before you know it, you’re spending your weekends battling the orcish hordes with a foam rubber sword in local woodland.

LARP.... the furry kind apparently...

Well ok, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but you probably get the gist of it. The Internet presents us with access to a plethora of information, much of it pointless and compiled by geeks elsewhere on the web. It’s very easy to be drawn into this web of discographies and minutiae, and that is a very slippery downward slope. Because pretty soon you start relating that pointless data in your head to other people, and earning your very own ‘GEEK’ label.

So, we’ve got the internet cramming all our brains full of pointless Star Trek info, and we’re toting around more technology than Inspector Gadget. What happens when one of those now-vital pieces of technology goes wrong, or suddenly you can’t access the internet to download the latest war gaming supplement? Well then you turn to that perennial die-hard geek, the techy.

Being one of these fine people myself, I’ve witnessed the increased demand for my ‘services’ first hand. Once upon a time the only people interested in asking me to help with their technological woes were other tech-heads wanting to pick my brains, or people that I was employed to help. And the latter group often only wanted the bare minimum; go in, fix the problem as quickly as possible, and get away from them lest they be contaminated with un-coolness or something. Now my Grandad calls me up for tech support. He’s seventy years old, and he calls me up to ask me about internet downloads and broadband speeds.

The techy that was once shunned as a necessary evil (much akin to taxes or alarm clocks) is now an integral part of most social groups. The demand for their help – both paid and unpaid – has risen dramatically on the wave of technology that’s swept us all off our feet in the last few years. And so not only have the existing techys become so popular, more people are becoming tech-heads!

Finally – and this one veers drastically away from the tech side of things – is nostalgia. The 1980’s saw the rise of the Saturday morning cartoon, the release of some classic films, and awful fashion. And the nostalgia for these things in the people that were there first time ‘round has prompted savvy merchandisers (notably t-shirt manufacturers) to cash in on this by releasing lines of products sporting the logos and catchphrases of 80’s properties. It’s also prompted misty-eyed twenty-something’s to buy their favourite 80’s films and/or TV shows on DVD. Transformers, Top Gun, The Goonies, ThunderCats… These and many more captured our imaginations in our adolescence, and are now re-capturing them now as we indulge in simple pleasures from a simpler time for us. Hence why it’s not unusual to spot people in 2010 sporting Top Gun Hoodies, or Truffle Shuffle t-shirts!

So there we have, one man(geeks) take on why we’re taking over the world. Did I say taking over? Oh, I meant… erm… helping the world through suppressing dissident elements. Yeah. That’s it.